A Stoughton father’s Vietnam War journey

Allan Stein

Monday

Jul 7, 2008 at 12:01 AMJul 7, 2008 at 7:06 AM

A Stoughton man has written a book about his journey to visit his son in Vietnam during the war, a trip that nearly cost him his life and helped heal a community wounded by war. “My Son’s War” is by Charles Yaitanes, a former town selectman.

A Stoughton man has written a book about his trip to visit his soldier son in Vietnam nearly four decades ago, a journey that nearly took his life and helped heal a community wounded by war.

“My Son’s War,” by Charles Yaitanes, a former town selectman, is published by the Reginald vanFenwick Press of Stoughton. The 160-page book is on sale on Amazon.com and will soon be available at local book stores.

“I didn’t go over there to make history. I went over there to find my son,” Yaitanes said.

Yaitanes, now 85, said that after nearly four decades he simply had forgotten about his one-man odyssey to Vietnam during the height of that divisive conflict to find and see his then 19-year-old son.

That was until his grandson, Greg Yaitanes, a director of such TV shows as “CSI: Miami,” “Prison Break” and “Lost,” heard about his journey and encouraged his grandfather to write a book. The younger Yaitanes also wants to make a movie out of the story.

With the help of Newton-based writer Robin Stratton, Charles Yaitanes recreates the spirit of Vietnam-era Stoughton. He describes his son George, the middle child of three sons, as a somewhat distant youth yearning to find his own way.

The year was 1969 and nine out of 39 soldiers from Stoughton had been killed in action in Vietnam.

As other young men in Stoughton were enlisting or being drafted into military service, George was exempt because of an arm injury that made him ineligible to serve in the Army, Marines and Navy.

But not the Air Force.

Without his parents’ permission or their knowledge, George enlisted in the Air Force. After basic training, his next stop was Vietnam.

“We were worried. Nine (Stoughton men) were killed. Are we going to be Number 10 with my son? It scared the hell out of you,” his father said.

Unanswered letters

All then-Selectman Charles and Ann Yaitanes knew at the time was that George had been stationed on an air base in South Vietnam. They sent him letters and cards hoping to ease their anxiety.

All the letters went unanswered. Many times the family inquired into his status with the Air Force. It was always the same answer: George Yaitanes has not been listed as dead or missing in action.

Then, while shopping for Christmas presents in a local department store, Charles Yaitanes had a flash of inspiration. As a father, he needed to go to Vietnam, find George, bring his family some peace back home.

“Yes, this makes sense,” Yaitanes writes in “My Son’s War.” “You know that if he was going to write, he would have by now. For some reason, he’s not writing, and I want to find out why.”

Before Yaitanes could go to Vietnam, he had to clear a diplomatic and government minefield.

The Vietnamese embassy wanted to know why a civilian wanted to go to a war zone. The U.S. government wanted to know who was Charles Yaitanes and could he be trusted. The military wanted to enlist his services as a covert operative transporting sensitive documents from Vietnam back to the U.S.

The journey quickly grew into a mission much larger than Yaitanes had ever envisioned.

Stoughton parents wanted him to find out about their sons and deliver personal letters. As a representative of local government, Yaitanes became a kind of emissary of hope on a fact-finding mission into what the Vietnam War was all about.

Yaitanes said it took 32 hours to go from Boston to Vietnam. By the time the military plane landed in Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base outside Saigon at 9:15 a.m., he had crossed 11 time zones.

Gruesome duty

Yaitanes was surprised to find his son was at the base at that very moment. He found him standing in a group of other soldiers in the barracks.

“I came to see how you’re doing,” he said, wanting to throw his arms around him.

“You came to see how I’m doing? You came to (expletive) Vietnam?” his son exclaimed.

Yaitanes found out his son’s reasons for not writing. Men were dying in the jungles and his son had been assigned the gruesome job of morgue duty.

As he writes in the book, his son felt this way:

“Sort of hard to tell your folks in a letter: ‘Dear Mom and Dad, today three guys got blown to bits and I wound up holding a head. Puked and puked and puked.’”

Charles Yaitanes had his own brushes with death during his journey.

A Viet Cong operative tossed a satchel bomb at the car he was traveling in, he writes. He was there during a mortar attack on the air base. And his military helicopter was shot full of holes and forced to make a hard landing in a dense cloud of smoke.

Stoughton veterans services director Michael Pazyra, owner of the Reginald vanFenwick Press, said “My Son’s War” is a story about a father on a personal mission to find his son in Vietnam.

“It’s very unusual. My son was in Iraq. I don’t think I would have gone over there. I don’t think it would have satisfied my conscience to go over there. But Charlie Yaitanes is different,” Pazyra said.

Abington Veterans Services Director Joseph D. Colantoni agreed that it is rare for a parent to choose to go to a war zone to find a family member.

“It is a great thing. It’s the greatest thing in the world. That is what family is all about,” said Colantoni, 73, who keeps in touch by e-mail with his son, a Marine fighting in Afghanistan.

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